Autodidact: (n) a self-taught person. Poet: (n) a person who writes poetry.
Autodidactpoet: (n) A blog full of thoughts from a self-taught writer.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

On Bravery, Blossoming, and Being Too Much

I was brave today.

What a silly way to start a post, right? But I don't know how else to start it. I was brave.
I WAS brave. I did something that
intimidated me, and I was brave.

Perhaps really, though, what I did today was a culmination
of bravery. It's been a long, hard
process.

Today, I gave the sermon at church. It was on ableism, and on loving and
accepting people with disabilities. As with most
everything I write, this writing came straight from my heart. I didn't pull any punches; in fact, a friend who read it described it as
"fearless." When I sent it to
my minister for her to review ahead of time, I let her know: "I didn't
expect it to be so...gutsy." But it
was, because that was what had to be written.
It is truth, and it is reality, and my voice is one that tries to speak
truth and reality. So that is what I
did.

Let me back up. When
I was in college, I was terrified of
public speaking. I would lose my
voice the day before oral presentations, and I would often be sick before I had to give the
presentation. I hated it. Luckily (although it didn't feel lucky at the
time), I got lots of practice...but even with practice, I hated it.
Anytime I was given the choice of 10-15 minute presentation, or a 20
page paper, I never even had to think twice.
I've always been a writer and 20 pages was something I could crank out
easily enough.

Eventually, with exposure, I moved from anxiety manifesting
as illness down to just trembling. My
voice shook, my hands shook, my body shook...it was awful. I hated this almost more than vomiting before
presentations. The shaking was
noticeable, and almost entirely out of my control. Plus, the shaking made me embarrassed, which
made my face turn red. But not just red
-- no, we're not talking about getting a little pink in the cheeks. We're talking about so-red-my-face-throbbed
type of red. Tomato red. And it would not go away until about 30
minutes after I was done. And, just when
you thought I would reach my peak redness, I would stumble over a word and
manage to become even more red. I don't
think Crayola even has a color that could replicate the shade of red I managed
to obtain. In spite of all the practice
I had giving presentations in my liberal arts college, I never got over
it. I presented my senior thesis
masquerading as a trembling tomato.

In the year I took off between college and graduate school,
I worked for a local Mental Health Association.
That year, I presented "Kids On The Block" puppet shows at
local schools on bullying, drugs and alcohol, and physical and sexual
abuse. It was hard at first...but I
quickly realized that (1) elementary school kids are the most forgiving audience ever and (2) they didn't care about me. They were talking to the puppets. Also? I was wearing a black hood with mesh over the face and stood behind the puppets so nobody could see me. I even had my picture in the newspaper, and nobody never would have been able to identify me. It was, in a word, fantastic.
Towards the end of the year, I started doing the Yello Dyno
curriculum on personal body safety for kindergarten classrooms with no puppet,
and no hood/mask covering my face, and I found, surprisingly, that I could
present without shaking, and largely without turning red. Apparently, those puppets weren't just
therapeutic for the kids.

Once I reached graduate school, I would still be nervous
before presenting, but it was a manageable level of anxiety. I still turned all sorts of red, but I
learned to work with it, and it never presented a huge barrier. If given a choice, I will still, always, opt
for the paper over the presentation...but this is purely a preference and no
longer a choice made out of fear.

At this point, public speaking isn't necessarily something
that I love, but I can do it, and I
do it regularly. I try to do it
regularly, even, so that I don't somehow backslide into that world of red faces
and trembling. Plus, I like to make
myself do things that are hard every now and again. I hear it builds character. So while I still wouldn't put public speaking
on my list of Top 10 or even Top 20 Fun Things To Do, my feelings have slowly
but surely changed from Not Sure I'll
Make It Out Alive to a big, resounding Meh.

Aside from the actual act of speaking aloud, though, the
bigger struggle for me has been that of voice.
I like to think that I have always had a clear and strong sense of
voice in my writing. And, for this
reason, my writing (up until only a few years ago) stayed tightly locked in
files on my computer, in folders in desk drawers, and in the many, many, many
journals I kept from the age of 9 onward.
A deadly combination of bad creative writing teachers,
self-consciousness, and a sense of shame from always feeling like I was
emotionally "too much" created this feeling of my writing and my
voice being...well...too much. I kept
writing, of course, because not writing is simply not an option, but I kept it
hidden. I had to. Writing was the most personal expression of
myself, the place I put my passion without being afraid of being "too much."

This is not to say that I was disingenuous, necessarily. I was quiet, but I was always true to what I
believed, and my passions seeped out in small ways. That's the thing about being "too
much." It's impossible to contain
all of your much-ness in one body. I
learned from a young age how to pick and choose how much of my "too
much" seeped into the world -- how much of my too emotional, too clear,
too truthful, too excited, too passionate self could be in conversations and in
relationships with others. I was very
fortunate in my younger years, though, that I was never actively silenced. People heard and largely respected what of my
voice I shared. Aside from when I became
"too much," people nearly always respected and responded positively
to my voice.

That changed very quickly once I reached graduate
school. In my diversity classes in
particular, I was honest in my journals and in class. In my writing and with my adviser particularly,
I was willing to be myself. I showed her
a lot of my too much-ness. I was
passionate, and I was me.

In spite of this (or, perhaps, because of), for a solid year,
the only feedback I received was that I needed to work on "finding my
voice." I was consistently told
things like "the thing about you is that you are someone who does
wonderful and amazing things, but no one will ever notice you." At the end of each quarter, my feedback forms
told me that I had to work on finding my voice.
I talked with professors and my adviser about it -- "how do I do
this?" I asked. "I am being
me...really...when I have an opinion, I voice it. When I have something to say, I say it. When I disagree, I state it. What am I missing?"

Nobody could put their finger on it. I was told to participate more. I was told to speak out more. I was told to disagree with others more. And I did, and I did, and I did...and still
the feedback came rolling in (always from the same person): "find your
voice. Work on finding and using your
voice. Still not finding your
voice."

And about a year into the program, I snapped. I remember being in a study room in the
basement of the library and calling my sister, crying, that I just didn't
understand what they wanted from me. I
have a voice. A strong voice. I used my voice. And they weren't listening. I was so frustrated, I was to the point of considering
dropping out of the program.

So I did the only thing I could think to do: I wrote a
journal entry for my diversity class on the issue of voice. This paper was turned in to the co-teachers
for the class, one of whom was my adviser.
I wrote about my voice, and the power I see and hear in my voice, and
the ways in which I see myself using my voice.
I did something super risky, and I called the professor in question out
by name. I wrote in that paper: "I
understand that you think I have not found my voice. However, I sincerely think the issue is not
that I have not found my voice. The
problem lies in the fact that you are not hearing me. I have found my voice. The problem is that you are not
listening."

Getting back that paper was terrifying, and the note that
read "let's talk" next to that particular passage was whatever is beyond terrifying. But we did -- we
talked. And my eval at the end of the
quarter noted that I had found my voice.
It was never an issue again.

But I have to admit: I was completely beat down by this
process. I internalized the message
that, in spite of what I do, no one will ever notice me. And if that wasn't enough, then life
completely fell apart.

Sexual assault, bullying, harassment, victim blaming...that'll
silence you, for sure. It wasn't
possible to "find my voice" during this time. I tried -- god knows I tried -- but it just
wasn't possible. I tried to use my
voice. I tried to advocate for
myself. And -- it wasn't entirely
unsuccessful, but it wasn't entirely successful, either. It was a hugely shaming, silencing time.

So I started this blog with the sole intention of re-finding
and sharing my voice. And that, amazingly,
is what I have done. Every post I make,
every time I write something about anything,
it takes an act of bravery. It is an
act of reclaiming my voice and of reminding myself that it exists. That it is strong, and it is worthy.

My challenge lately for myself has been not only to share my
voice here, in writing, but to also submit my writing to competitions and for
publication. I have been challenging
myself to share my writing aloud. I
won't lie: it's fucking terrifying. But
my voice ­­- my voice - is too
strong, and too passionate not to share.
It's why I have gone through this process and the pain and the work of
reclaiming it. I want people to hear me. I
don't want to be the person who will never be noticed.

The past two nights leading up to the service today, I had
the same dream. I prepared for the
service, was ready, got to church, 10:00 rolled around...and no one came. It was me, the guy who was playing the piano,
and the minister...and that was it. The
sanctuary was empty, and we all went home.
In my dream, I was devastated.

Because the fear -- the real fear that founded this dream --
it wasn't that no one would come. I knew
that bodies would be there. It wasn't
about the number of people, even. It was
about the fact that I was terrified that I wouldn't be heard. I went in to do this today knowing too well
that it was possible that I would not be heard.
That people could deny my voice.
That I could be silenced, in one way or another.

It was a risk. It was
a risk to stand up there at all, and it was an even bigger risk to share this
passion, to share my too much-ness. I
knew that what I was saying would take people out of their comfort zone. I knew I would challenge them to consider
other ways of viewing people and issues they may not have even considered. I knew that my passion seeped out in my
writing, and that it would come across in my voice. It had to.
I care about this issue too much.

But you know what happened?
I wasn't silenced. I wasn't
shamed. I wasn't told that I was too
much, or that I had to find my voice. I
wasn't told that my voice would never be heard.

Instead, what happened was simple and beautiful.

I was heard. And my
voice -- it mattered. It started
conversations. It sparked thoughts. It may have opened minds. I hope it opened some hearts.

I spoke up. I was
heard. And my voice mattered.

The only words I have to describe what that feels like is
that it feels like something in my chest is breaking open. That happens a lot at church. It's been happening a lot lately. I don't even have words for this sort of
gratitude.

So yes -- I was brave today.
My intention for bravery this year...it's working. I am reminded again of my very favorite quote
(which, I swear, will become a tattoo for me in some form one of these days):

"And the day
came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than
the risk it took to blossom." - Anaïs
Nin.

Blossoming is painful.
It requires bravery. But it is so
much better than that pain of remaining tight inside the bud.

2 comments:

Beautiful! Thanks for writing that. Wow! You have come a long way =) I don't remember you being shy in college... maybe because I liked you too much to notice. I could see how much you had inside of you, and loved you for it.

About Me

"My continuing passion is to part a curtain,
that invisible shadow that falls between people,
the veil of indifference to each other's presence,
each other's wonder, each other's human plight."
Eudora Welty